Colonel Enderby's Wife: A Novel

Excerpt from Colonel Enderby's Wife: A Novel
The house at Bassett Darcy lies low. From around it the well-timbered park rises on three sides, in gentle undulations, towards the stretch of high table-land forming the south-eastern comer of the county. On the fourth side, broad lawns slope down to the banks of the Tull - a quiet, uneventful stream, that wanders indolently through mile after mile of rich meadow land, past osier beds and alders, and long lines of pollarded willows; under the wide arches of old brown sandstone bridges; by villages of quaint halt-timbered houses, and spinneys, where the rooks congregate and nightingales sing in the early summer; and by waste places - pleasant spots in which Nature has her own way still, and refuses to be put in harness and to labour for the general good of mankind in any more direct manner than by an offering of sweet scents and colours - places overgrown with meadow-sweet, and yellow flags, and pink willow-herb, and tall spikes of purple loosestrife, and docks, and nodding grasses - by these the river wanders to mingle its current at last - some few miles west of the bright little modem watering-place of Tullingworth - with that of the historic Avon, and so find its way to the Severn, and the far distant unknown sea.
The Tull is anything but dramatic. It indulges in no sparkling races over rounded boulders, no splashings into deep pools, no roar and rush, no petulance or bubbling laughter.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.